There are times when the sea of your life is stormy an sometimes when it is calm and the water is clear. Much like a wave, you may edge and dive towards it or let the tide steer you. Grief is much like that wave and learning to ride the wave takes courage, respect for the deep sea and lots of practice.
Even the most experienced surfers still know that they are at the mercy of the water.
Being present with your grief reveals a natural rhythm - an ebb and flow. There will be periods of intense feelings and then periods of alleviation with everything in constant motion. This natural wave like rhythm is how you dose and heal yourself with pain, sinking into it at times and moving away from it at others. Tuning into and honouring this rhythm is effective self-care.
Acknowledge that emotions and grief are always changing helps develop confidence to adapt to the emotional hardship of loss. Neil Jordan said it best with ''I had hoped grief was similar to other emotions and that it would end much like laughter or happiness. ''
Try to not silence your feelings of grief with stoic positive all's fine behaviour. Dont get me wrong there is a time and a place but acknowledging pain helps you ride the wave instead of trying to swim against the tide which is utterly draining.
Consciously store all the 'tools' that support you through your loss and intentionally notice what you need, when you need it.
It takes practise to ride the waves of grief. Although I've never actually tried surfing and Id love too, I've heard that it's very challenging to learn and do and requires 1000's of hours practice.
Much like the tools of yoga and meditation - a practices. We don't become experts straight away and then never do them again. We practice them repeatedly, so that our skills are adaptable, flexible, and second-nature when we need them. If we can practice tending to our physical, emotional and mental needs in the sanctuary of our yoga mat, we will be better prepared when life happens off the mat.
“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”
This piece above was taken from a Reddit page
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